subject-matter, but the spirit in which it is performed; and, as in his sight, with a loyal and devoted heart, strive to be outdone by no one in the completeness and efficiency of its execution.

This is the healthy view of our human world. Contentment, comfort, abundance, depend on its wide diffusion. It would put every one in his proper place, and fit him with his proper task. It would let none be idle, and leave none in want. It would abolish useless privilege, and bring all under the constraint of wholesome duty. This view reconciles earth and heaven. While we are in the world, it makes us, in the best of senses, friends with the world, but not less fitted for heaven when we pass away. It is also the honest and sincere view. Thousands who disown it act upon it; and nore more so, and with a keener eye even to selfish advancement, than some who put forth an exclusive claim to the religious character. Such is the course of action which contributes to relative perfection, by linking our individual lives through specific duties with the general well-being of the world.

JOHN JAMES TAYLER.

VII. LABOR NOT LOST.

A genial moment oft has given
What years of toil and pain,

Of long industrious toil, have striven
To win, and all in vain:

Yet count not, when thine end is won,

That labor merely lost

Nor say it had been wiser done

To spare the painful cost.

When, heaped upon the altar, lie
All things to feed the fire,

One spark alighting from on high,

The flames at once aspire:

But those sweet gums and fragrant woods,

Its rich materials rare,

By tedious quest o'er lands and floods

Had first been gathered there.

R. C. TRENCH.

VIII. ANCIENT AND MODERN WRITERS.

The classics possess a peculiar charm, from the circumstance that they have been the models, I might almost say the masters, of composition and thought in all ages. In the contemplation of these august teachers of mankind, we are filled with conflicting emotions. They are the early voice of the world, better remembered and more cherished still than all the intermediate words that have been uttered; as the lessons of childhood still haunt us when the impressions of later years have been effaced from the mind. But they show with most unwelcome frequency the tokens of the world's childhood, before passion had yielded to the sway of reason and the affections. They want the highest charm of purity, of righteousness, of elevated sentiments, of love to God and man. It is not in the frigid philosophy of the Porch and the Academy that we are to seek these; not in the marvellous teachings of Socrates, as they come mended by the mellifluous words of Plato; not in the resounding line of Homer, on whose inspiring tale of blood Alexander pillowed his head; not in the animated strain of Pindar, where virtue is pictured in the successful strife of an athlete at the Isthmian games; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark with self-love and the spirit of vengeance; not in the fitful philosophy and intemperate eloquence of Tully; not in the genial libertinism of Horace, or the stately atheism of Lucretius. No: these must not be our masters; in none of these are we to seek the way of life. For eighteen hundred years, the spirit of these writers has been engaged in weaponless contest with the Sermon on the Mount, and those two sublime commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets. The strife is still pending. Heathenism, which has possessed itself of such siren forms, is not yet exorcised. It still tempts the young, controls the affairs of active life, and haunts the meditations of age.

Our own productions, though they may yield to those of the ancients in the arrangement of ideas, in method, in beauty of form, and in freshness of illustration, are immeasurably superior in the truth, delicacy, and elevation of their sentiments; above all, in the benign recognition of that great Christian revelation, the brotherhood of man. How vain are eloquence and poetry, compared with this heaven-descended truth! Put in one scale that simple utterance, and in the other the lore of antiquity, with its accumulating

glosses and commentaries, and the last will be light and trivial in the balance. Greek poetry has been likened to the song of the nightingale, as she sits in the rich, symmetrical crown of the palmtree, trilling her thick-warbled notes; but even this is less sweet and tender than the music of the human heart.

CHARLES SUMNER.

IX. — THE TRUE SOURCE OF REFORM.

The great element of reform is not born of human wisdom; it does not draw its life from human organizations. I find it only in Christianity. Thy kingdom come," there is a sublime and pregnant burden in this prayer. It is the aspiration of every soul that goes forth in the spirit of reform. For what is the significance of this prayer? It is a petition that all holy influences would penetrate and subdue and dwell in the heart of man, until he shall think and speak and do good from the very necessity of his being. So would the institutions of error and wrong crumble and pass away. So would sin die out from the earth; and, the human soul living in harmony with the divine will, this earth would become like heaven.

It is too late for the reformers to sneer at Christianity; it is foolishness for them to reject it. In it are enshrined our faith in human progress, our confidence in reform. It is indissolubly connected with all that is hopeful, spiritual, capable, in man. That men have mis

understood it and perverted it, is true. But it is also true that the noblest efforts for human melioration have come out of it, have been based upon it. Is it not so? Come, ye remembered ones, who sleep the sleep of the just, who took your conduct from the line of Christian philosophy! come from your tombs, and answer.

Come, Howard! from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the lazar-house, and show us what philanthropy can do when imbued with the spirit of Jesus. Come, Eliot! from the thick forest where the red man listens to the word of life; come, Penn! from thy sweet counsel and weaponless victory, - and show us what Christian zeal and Christian love can accomplish with the rudest barbarians or the fiercest hearts. Come, Raikes! from thy labors with the ignorant and the poor, and show us with what an eye this faith regards the lowest and least of our race; and how diligently it labors, not for

the body, not for the rank, but for the plastic soul that is to course the ages of immortality.

And ye, who are a great number, ye nameless ones, who have done good in your narrower spheres, content to forego renown on earth, and seeking your reward in the record on high! come, and tell us how kindly a spirit, how lofty a purpose, or how strong a courage, the religion ye professed can breathe into the poor, the humble, and the weak.

Go forth, then, Spirit of Christianity! to thy great work of reform. The Past bears witness to thee in the blood of thy martyrs, and the ashes of thy saints and heroes. The Present is hopeful because of thee. The Future shall acknowledge thy omnipotence.

E. H. CHAPIN.

X. — GREAT MEN GENERALLY GOOD.
(See p. 124.)

Those who have shone in all ages as the lights of the world; the most celebrated names that are recorded in the annals of fame; legislators, the founders of states, and the fathers of their country, on whom succeeding ages have looked back with filial reverence; patriots, the guardians of the laws, who have stemmed the torrent of corruption in every age; heroes, the saviours of their country, who have returned victorious from the field of battle, or, more than victorious, who have died for their country; philosophers, who have opened the book of nature, and explained the wonders of almighty power; bards, who have sung the praises of virtue and of virtuous men, whose strains carry them down to immortality, with a few excep

tions, have been uniformly on the side of goodness, and have been as distinguished in the temple of fame. It was one of the maxims which governed their lives, that there is nothing in nature which can compensate wickedness; that, although the rewards and punishments which influence illiberal and ungenerous minds were set aside; that, although the thunders of the Almighty were hushed, and the gates of paradise were open no more, they would follow religion and virtue for their own sake, and co-operate with eternal Providence in perpetual endeavors to favor the good, to depress the bad, and to promote the happiness of the whole creation.

JOHN LOGAN.

APPENDIX.